I am 30 year practitioner of Aisan Medicine and the Director of Heartwood Integrative Health and Healing which I founded 23 years ago with a group of amazing healers in Evanston Illinois.  We are a community based center committed to social justice through our healing work and our study and practice of the Buddhist teachings.  I was born into a family of abuse and violence and am a survivor of child prostitution.  My saving grace was my Grandmother, Floy Hooper, who was a healer and meditation teacher and had a large following of students. She gave me my healing, meditation and chanting practices and instilled in me my deep faith in these practices as a path out of suffering. She was also an activist, first joining the suffrage movement and fighting for women’s right to vote.  With my Grandmother and her sangha, I burned my bra for Women’s Lib, marched for civil rights, fought for Roe v Wade, protested the Vietnam war and helped create safe shelters for abused women and kids.  Ours was a path of engaged Buddhism and meditation in action. And this remains my path today.

My Grandmother also did extensive retreat practice and I have followed her example in this and have engaged in years of both solitary and group retreat in cities, forests, in the mountain caves and on the shores of lakes, creeks and oceans. I have prayed and practiced and offered healing in China, India, Nepal and Bhutan, in Europe, Canada and Central America, and in most of the United States.  There are so many powerful places on this planet to just fall down in prayer. And with the state of our world, on some days, what else is there to do?  I believe in every fiber of my being in the power of prayer, whatever that means to each of us personally, to affect positive change in ourselves and our world. I believe in the Buddha’s teachings as a clear and proven path out of the deep suffering of ourselves, our fellow beings and our planet.  It is a path that continues to sustain me.

My deep love is to walk this path given to all of us freely by Buddha Shakyamuni, to continue to come to know the nature of my mind, and through this to be of as much benefit to people, animals, beings in the seen and unseen realms, and our precious Mother Earth.  I have had the great blessing to study with many teachers, both Buddhist and of other faiths, philosophies and walks of life. And to each of these teachers I am grateful for all the teachings that they have given to me.  These days I study and practice with Tsokni Rinpoche and his Dzogchen teachings, Lama Tsultrim Allione and Tara Mandala, with her focus on the teachings of women, Lama Willa Blythe Baker and One Earth Sangha with its focus on eco dharma and Lama Rod Owens who opens my mind to the dharma from the teachings of a Black American male.  I also have experienced sexual abuse and other abuses of power from 2 of my gurus, one male and one female, and in response have co-created the Heartwood program for survivors of guru and teacher abuse to reach out and offer care to others who have been victimized.

These days you can find me either on the beach here on the shore of Lake Michigan in the early morning doing my prayers and practices, or in our beautiful shrine room upstairs at Heartwood with our incredible sangha of students.  I have the complete honor of leading classes with my partner Larry who offers the depth of scholarship of the Buddhist path as I offer the meditation and healing practices.  If any of my words here speak to you, I would love to practice and study with you as you walk your path of awakening and healing. Heartwood is here for you and our meditation classes are here for you.

Credentials: MA, LAc, Dipl Ac

847.491.9858 | Email

Larry Akey first connected with Buddhism in the 1970s when Trungpa Rnpoche was teaching near his childhood home in Colorado. Inspired by his grandfather, a university professor, he has a deep connection with scholarship and study of Buddhist texts. Before discovering Khandro Rinpoche and Tibetan Buddhism, Larry practiced with Soka Gakkai, the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and Shambhala. Although Larry has studied and practiced primarily with Khandro Rinpoche and the Mindrolling lineage, he has also received teachings and empowerments from a number of other teachers, including Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, Garchen Rinpoche, Lama Alan Wallace and Acharya Malcolm Smith. Larry leads the meditation component of Heartwood. He has had extensive retreat time.

202.580.9313 | Email

A Bhutanese nun, Choela Tenzin Dadon is an accomplished scholar and a gifted teacher. After completing a traditional 13-year program in Buddhist philosophy at Jamyang Choling Institute in Dharamsala, India, she went on to earn two Masters degrees and a PhD from the University of Malaysia, and has published extensively under her lay name, Sonam Wangmo. A global leader in the effort to improve gender equity in Buddhism, and especially the fight to obtain full ordination for Tibetan Buddhist nuns, she was recognized as one of the outstanding women in Buddhism by the International Women’s Meditation Center. Choela is currently the Director of Education for the Vajrayana Buddhist Council of Malaysia. She is fluent in English and four other languages, as well as several Bhutanese dialects.

Pamela Ayo Yetunde, J.D., Th.D. is a pastoral counselor, Community Dharma Leader, and the author of several books and articles.  She is the co-editor of the Nautilus Book Award-winning Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation and Freedom  and the Frederick J. Streng Award-winning book Buddhist-Christian Dialogue, U.S. Law, and Womanist Theology for Transgender Spiritual Care.  Ayo’s next book, Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community will be published in February. Ayo is also an associate editor for Lion’s Roar where she has conducted several podcast interviews https://www.lionsroar.com/podcast/.  Ayo currently resides in Chicago.